Here’s our most recent playlist of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Sigma updates website. Sigma Adrich has updated their website. It looks nice (except I think they need to be consistent with the red–it’s too light at the top) and time will tell whether life science researchers find it easier to use. The video about the new site shows 4-5 staff members describing the changes and excitement they have for it (frankly I’d rather just see the updates). The video is a bit over the top–did they really work with the ‘top designers in the world’? From the web 2.0 standpoint, they now have favorites and product reviews, which is great, and it looks to be iPad compatible. Social media is not prominently displayed–links are in gray at the bottom right. They indicate that it is the ‘first stage in their digital evolution.’ The sophisticated video makes me think of this post about every company needing to be a media company now. Is your company expanding its video production team? Tineye image search. This is cool. Ever see an image in an Ad, or get sent an image that someone in your group wants to […]

Here’s our most recent playlist of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Promega updates website. Promega recently redesigned their website, and while I thought the old one seemed easy to navigate, it’s clear they’re looking forward with this redesign. The interface is simpler and they also offer RSS feeds for some sections (which we’d love to see for ALL areas of ALL life science company websites). They have a chat feature too (not sure if it’s new) which is good as a grad student cancer researcher I spoke to recently said that “phone calls are only for emergencies,” typical of the new scientist’s attitude. Promega will also be linking their blog soon and has also started a blog-style news aggregator called “Forensic Connections.” Scientists and the social media survey. Lab Manager Magazine recently published a social media survey of 300 of their readers. Take a look at the results and judge for yourself, but we’re hesitant to give a full ‘thumbs up’ on the survey as the article isn’t a full report. The results are different than what we’ve found with our surveys, for example LinkedIn is the most popular application. The answers do underline the […]

Wow two months since the last Sound Bytes! We’ve updated our look from 80’s mix tape to ’00’s iPod, here’s our most recent playlist of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: EMD Millipore: How do you like them apples? This week at our San Diego Biotechnology Network event my good friend and colleague Steve Edenson from EMD Millipore sponsored, and he showed me their brochure for Lead Discovery services, the tagline is ‘at the core of your discovery’ and they’re a nice light green with apples subtly featured. Here’s the twist: it’s apple scented! Perhaps it’s a gimmick, but it makes it memorable and you could even argue that it could help with branding or even send a subliminal message. EMD Millipore also recently announced their new branding (PDF) after Merck KgaA aquired Millipore last July. I’m not sure how the marketing team came up with the apple scent, but it shows creativity–how could you distinguish your marketing materials? I’ve heard great ideas from outside our industry, perhaps ask your printers, vendors or consultants for ideas, or have a brainstorming session on a Friday afternoon with your team. I also like to keep an open mind […]

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Cool online biotech stuff. We can’t help but notice how many people are starting cool biotech websites. Check out BetterBio, a community-run organization that promises better biotech communication. I love this new spirit of the web where asking for donations is OK and even inspiring. Also check out ConnectingSF, a portal to help those traveling to San Francisco for the big JP Morgan Healthcare conference to connect. The conference is notorious for its large attendance and paucity of online resources, so the site is a welcome addition. Finally, we saw an article in Xconomy about Relay Technology Management, who have a cool app which facilitates partnering with a sophisticated database of drug-related scientific discoveries. It looks like it may be difficult to get a free test drive, but check out this video which shows some of the features. All these sites are harbingers of the next wave of what we’ll be able to do with ‘life science 2.0’ on the web. Mind Maps. We think a lot about ways to organize content on the web and social media and our related strategies and tactics, […]

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Social Media Tools Feed. Our 4th Social Media for Life Science and Biotechnology Workshop went well this week (it will be available as a webinar soon, check out the training page for updates), and we’re ready to start again next year with the series. We’ll also be rolling out some new tools and resources for you soon, to whet your appetite, check out our social media tools RSS feed which you can subscribe to by email. The only constant in social media is change, so keeping apprised of the best tools will help you to keep on top. Holiday Gift Cards Benefiting Science Students. Our friends in the Bay area have a great idea–send holiday e-cards that benefit California students! Check it out, it looks easy, or consider making a donation to your favorite charity in lieu of sending printed cards or gifts. On Literature Becoming More Social. Several items have surfaced recently about life science research publications becoming more social, such as a review of paper sharing application Mendeley and a new app called Annotatr which allows scientists to comment on papers. I […]

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Science Online 2011 Conference The fifth annual conference for science bloggers will take place in North Carolina January 13-15th. Science blogging is an exploding area, and learning more about and sponsoring the conference is a great way to reach these increasingly important thought leaders in life science. The conference sold out in 45 minutes, but you can still sponsor and I think it’s a great opportunity to show your support and get exposure for any online campaigns. I’ll be in attendance as well, let me know if you have questions or want any specific information about the conference. Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 2010 Meeting had 550+ Tweeters! I attended SfN this week and made an archive of the tweets. Currently the summary lists 572 people tweeting with the #sfn10 hashtag, and I estimate that 80-90% of these were actually at the conference. With 30,000+ scientists at the conference, this is still only 1-2%, which is a low number, but I was able to find at least one exhibitor at the conference (Jove) who said they got good results from their tweets. Also, I think […]

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Life Technologies’ New Look Someone could write a book about the different branding of Life Technologies throughout the years. To me, they were the first company to really bring a distinctive branding to life science products, and I think following them is important to learn about how companies can deal with the challenges of consolidation. Check out how they’re using the Life Technologies brand as an umbrella for the many company brands they represent. One former Invitrogen employee told me that it is reminiscent of IVGN’s early days. What do you think? It is also interesting in light of CEO Greg Lucier’s comments that the company will expand into the medical area in the next year. Will this new branding be used, or will they require more differentiation for this market? The Social Network. I just saw this movie about the genesis of Facebook and I’m ‘assigning’ it to anyone who is interested in creating social media applications for life scientists. While the movie tends to focus on the negatives of the early days of Facebook, it also shows how this application, which faced […]

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Life Technologies launches Invitrogen Select, a publication alert aggregator. As we’ve talked about here, research publications are the ‘glue’ that tie life science researchers together, and LIFE is ingeniously tapping into this with it’s new Invitrogen Select website and service. Researchers can sign up for publication alerts in a variety of fields, and LIFE adds an unobtrusive text advertisement at the end of the publication titles. It’s a nice tool for researchers because it is difficult to set up Pubmed alerts which all appear in one email. How to build a social media cheat sheet for any topic. This is brilliant and self explanatory, I highly suggest doing it to become an expert on any life science topic and/or to generate content for your social media campaigns. If you don’t feel as though you have the time, check out our Custom RSS service, we can generate daily emails for you. The buzz is all about Quora right now… Quora is a site everyone’s talking about, it is a ‘clearing house’ of questions and answers for any topic. It looks like it will be good […]

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media: Commentary on social media and science from David Bradley Where is social media for life scientists headed? Read thought leader David Bradley’s commentary on the subject, and also be sure to read Brian Krueger’s blog post as well. The importance of finding value is underlined, as well as the challenges at hand, and it will help you learn how your company can leverage social media to help and attract life scientists. Life Technologies launches the Molecular Probes Technology Network and the Protocol Exchange for transfection. Related to the first links, Life Technologies is dabbling in social media communities for life scientists with these new applications, which are focused around protocols and discussions. Will they gain traction? Time will tell, however the similar (from an application perspective) Stem Cell Network they launched a few months ago seems to be languishing. Do the networks meet our STIR Social Media system criteria, which we believe are needed for success? You decide! New Twitter launches…kind of… Twitter is launching a new web interface, which you can learn about in real time by following the #newtwitter hashtag. The interface […]

We’re starting something new here, inspired by our friends Mike Spear and Walter Jessen, who each provide posts with useful links and summaries regularly. Our ‘flavor’ will be focused on life science & biotech marketing and social media, all meant to keep you up to speed on the interesting things we’ve found during the week. We’re documenting all of the links on the bookmark sharing site Delicious under the ‘soundbytes‘ tag, so you can always reference them (and even sign up for RSS updates–look for the orange RSS symbol). You’ll note that there are many bookmarks there now…we’ve had this in the works for a while. Without further ado, here are our first Sound Bytes! Google Announces ‘Caffeine,’ a new ‘as it happens’ search engine feature. This link’s a bit outdated, but very important, so I’m including it. Google may be feeling pressure from more timely searches available from Twitter, and introduced this new feature which indexes a ‘subsection of the internet’ quickly. What does this mean for you? We talk about in our workshops and training that search engines love dynamic websites, and this new feature turns this affection up to 11. Which ‘subsection of the internet’ do they […]